Leatherhead.-What do you lack, what do you buy, pretty mistress? A fine hobby-horse to make your son a tilter? a drum to make him a soldier? a fiddle to make him a reveller? what is it you lack? little dogs for your daughters, or babies male or female ?"

Busy.-Look not to them, hearken not; the place is Smithfield, or the field of smiths, the grove of hobby-horses and trinkets, the wares are the wares of devils, and the whole fair is the shop of Satan. They are hooks and baits, very baits, that are hung out on every side, to catch you, and to hold you, as it were by the gills, and by the nostrils, as the fisher doth; therefore you must not look nor turn towards them. The heathen man could stop his ears with wax against the harlot of the sea; do you the like with your fingers against the bells of the beast.

Busy is at last himself hooked by a roasted pig with sweet sauce and crackling. He hastens into the booth where the pig is dressed, saying, "We 'scape so much of the other vanities by our early entering." The female Puritan adds—“ it is an edifying consideration."

To conclude the subject of toys, an excellent cariacature of some of the productions of the Lake school adapted to infantile capacities, may be cited from the "Rejected Addresses." Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter, who dragged her to the theatre, having been left at home for naughtiness, which she details.

My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New-Year's Day,
So in Kate Wilson's shop

Papa (he's my Papa and Jack's,)
Bought me last week a doll of wax,

And brother Jack a top.

Jack's in the pouts, and this it is,
He thinks mine came to more than his,
So to my drawer he goes,

Takes out my doll, and, O, my stars!
He pokes her head between the bars
And melts off half her nose!

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg,
And tie it to his peg-top's peg,
And bang, with might and main,
Its head against the parlour door,
Off flies the head, and hits the floor,
And breaks a window pane.

Besides toys, there is a species of literature peculiar to the nursery, for which it would be difficult to substitute new compositions that should come as it were with the child's new teeth, and be adapted to the growing intellect, in appropriate succession. I will briefly notice a few of these universal favorites of childhood. The Cock-horse ridden to Banbury Cross-Jack Horner, his Corner, and his Christmas Pie,The Blackbird-Pie,-The Rape of the Tarts,-Little RedRiding Hood and the Wolf,-Philip Quarl and his Monkeys, -The Faithful Friday. But not to make the list too long, I will only further ask, what English infant is there, of whom it may not be said, with Dr. Johnson at Iona, that his patriotism has gained force at the recital of the exploits of Tom Thumb ; and his piety grown warmer at the providential escapes of Jack the Giant-Killer?

In the literature and history adapted to our riper years, there are several stories, imaginative or true, which would please in the nursery, and some of which have found their way there. These are particularly the relation of incidents occurring to children, or very young persons. We saw in the Aviary, how frequently the Robin-Red-breast has been cele

brated by our poets for "painfully" covering with leaves the

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Children in the Wood." Sir Joshua Reynolds painted two pictures of these celebrated children.—Their ages appear in the following stanza :

The one a fine and prettye boy

Not passing three years old,

The other a girl more young than he

And framed in beauty's molde.

This old ballad is the subject of one of Addison's papers in the Spectator. It is a fair specimen of his playful manner, and of some of the graces of his style. Of that style Dr. Johnson writes" Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar, but not coarse, and elegant, but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." He attained the most ornamental degree of the simple style of writing, united with purity and perspicuity; but he is defective in precision, and still more in nervous energy. The subjects he treats of did not require styles adapted to philosophy or to business; nor would he probably have excelled in them. "It is the custom of the Mahometans, if they see any printed or written paper upon the ground, to take it up, and lay it aside carefully, as not knowing but it may contain some piece of their Alcoran. I must confess I have so much of the Mussulman in me, that I cannot forbear looking into every printed paper which comes in my way, under whatsoever despicable circumstances it may appear. For this reason, when my friends take a survey of my library, they are very much surprised to find, upon the shelf of folios, two long bandboxes standing upright among my books, till I let them see that they are both of them lined with deep erudition, and abstruse literature. I might likewise mention a paper-kite, from which

I have received great improvement: and a hat-case, which I would not exchange for all the beavers in Great Britain. This my inquisitive temper, or rather impertinent humour of prying into all sorts of writing, with my natural aversion to loquacity, gives me a good deal of employment when I enter any house in the country; for I cannot, for my heart, leave a room, before I have thoroughly studied the walls of it, and examined the several printed papers which are usually pasted upon them. The last piece that I met with upon this occasion, gave me a most exquisite pleasure. My reader will think I am not serious, when I acquaint him that the piece I am going to speak of was the old ballad of the Two Children in the Wood, which is one of the darling songs of the common people, and has been the delight of most Englishmen in some part of their age.

This song is a plain simple copy of nature, destitute of all the helps and ornaments of art. The tale of it is a pretty tragical story, and pleases for no other reason but because it is a copy of nature. There is even a despicable simplicity in the verse; and yet, because the sentiments appear genuine and unaffected, they are able to move the mind of the most polite reader with inward meltings of humanity and compassion. The incidents grow out of the subject, and are such as are the most proper to excite pity; for which reason the whole narration has something in it very moving, notwithstanding the author of it (whoever he was) has delivered it in such an abject phrase, and poorness of expression, that the quoting any part of it would look like a design of turning it into ridicule. But though the language is mean, the thoughts, as I have before said, from one end to the other, are natural, and therefore cannot fail to please those who are not judges of

language; or those who, notwithstanding they are judges of language, have a true and unprejudiced taste of nature. The condition, speech, and behaviour of the dying parents, with the age, innocence, and distress of the children, are set forth in such tender circumstances, that it is impossible for a reader of common humanity not to be affected with them. As for the circumstance of the Robin Red-breast, it is indeed a little poetical ornament; and to shew the genius of the author amidst all his simplicity, it is just the same kind of fiction which one of the greatest of the Latin poets has made use of upon a parallel occasion; I mean that passage in Horace, where he describes himself when he was a child, fallen asleep in a desert wood, and covered with leaves by the doves that took pity on him."

With regard to sticking ballads on the walls of a room, there is an illustration in that very entertaining old book, Walton's Angler. When Piscator wants to shew Venator what good eating a chub is, if it be only dressed according to the directions which he details with great minuteness, he takes him to "an honest ale-house, where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall. There my hostess (which I may tell you is both cleanly, and handsome, and civil,) hath dressed many a one for me, and shall now dress it after my fashion, and I warrant it good meat."

Another incident related of a child is far less familiar to English readers now than two centuries ago; it is that of the "Babe's bloody hands" in Spenser's Faery Queen. That poem is, on a variety of accounts, a great literary curiosity, and it is an interesting circumstance connected with it, that Spenser has materially contributed to form some of the